


Just Another Night in Lalotai ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

by skullopendra



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: Allusions to the Biology of Coconut Crabs, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Graphic and Inaccurate Depictions of Crab Digestive Systems, Minor Sexual Innuendo, Non-Sexual Soft Vore, Past Relationship(s) of an Unspecified Nature, Some Nauseating Language, man alive, we are digging Deep for these tags lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 16:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8761354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skullopendra/pseuds/skullopendra
Summary: Tamatoa tells Maui to prepare his final plea, but he's not really interested in all that... so he just goes ahead and eats him.¯\_(ツ)_/¯





	

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags.
> 
> I'm Not Even Joking They Are There For A Reason Please Utilize Them. That Is All.

Whatever final plea Maui prepares, he doesn’t get a chance to voice it before Tamatoa loses his patience and eats him anyway.

Moana is horrified.  Tamatoa idly replaces Maui’s hook on the place of honor atop his shell, as if he were doing something as mundane as rearranging a potted plant.  The bright bioluminescent colors flashing in her vision only heighten the nausea she feels at having witnessed something so horrible. She stares at her hands, attempting to ground herself -- but the green, glowing algae smeared on her palms does little to return her sense of balance to her.

She feels weightless, like Lalotai was submerged in water without her noticing and her body is drifting away. The sensation of coarse sand beneath her feet crosses her awareness. Moana stumbles to her knees. She buries her fingers in the sand as if to affirm its presence, but the feeling of being cast adrift doesn’t subside, despite her being seated firmly on the ground.

Tears swim in her vision. Her quest is over.

 _No_ , she thinks. _I won't let it be over._

Moana's hand ghosts over her grandmother's necklace. She doesn't need to open it to know the heart of Te Fiti is inside -- she can simply feel it, with the same certainty she could always feel the pull of the ocean inside her.

Moana will simply have to complete her task without the demigod.  She doesn't know how she'll do it yet... but this can't be the end of her journey.

Despite her conviction, the events she just witnessed have lain a blanket of numb terror over her mind. Her vision darkens as she clumsily lays down in the sand. She would spare a thought to be grateful that for some reason the monstrous crab has decided not to eat her yet, but that would mean thinking about it -- and that, she resolves not to do under any circumstances.

* * *

Moana awakens in the same position she was in when she lost consciousness.  She jolts upright and looks around, only to find she is back inside that cage of bones Tamatoa had placed her in.

She quickly stands and slowly turns, taking in the sight of the cavern carefully, searching for an avenue of escape, for --

Tamatoa.  The giant crab is fiddling with a row of glistening trinkets perched on a rock ledge. He has remarkable dexterity for something with claws so big, but to Moana, the arrangement still looks like a disorganized pile even after Tamatoa is satisfied with it.

There's no way she can defeat a monster as large as Tamatoa, not on her own. But if she can climb back up toward the veil between Lalotai and the ocean, get close enough to where it can hear her call... then surely the ocean will answer?

Moana clambers out of the cage just as she did before, when she had been moments too late with her distraction to save Maui. The sound of Tamatoa humming and sifting through his riches is loud enough that Moana's departure is completely muffled, and she bolts for the opening through which she had originally come.

With a shuddering exhale, Moana leaves the last wall of the strange shell-like fortress behind her and steps out onto the sand outcropping.

“Ocean?” she calls quietly, so as to avoid drawing Tamatoa's attention to his escaped dinner.

There is no response.

The shrieking of Lalotai’s denizens echoes in the distance, and carnivorous plants eat one another in macabre parasitism -- and the ocean glistens silently overhead.  It seems so far away, Moana worries. Is whatever veil that keeps the ocean from falling in Lalotai also keeping it from entering, or from hearing her?

Moana casts her gaze around, anxious now to find her way out of Lalotai. Every moment she deliberates is one in which Tamatoa may discover she has escaped.

A stream of hot water blasts suddenly upward a few yards away, and Moana gasps in alarm, stumbling, before her mind lights with the fire of inspiration. Of course! She can ride the geyser back up to the surface. It doesn't seem particularly safe, but neither had jumping into the realm of monsters after Maui in the first place. Moana nods to herself, resolute, and approaches the geyser.

Moana hesitates. The geyser is dormant for a long moment, and she nearly indulges the urge to peek into it when it blasts upward again. She falters momentarily, but takes a deep, bracing breath as the hot spray of the geyser flecks her cheeks. “Next one for sure,” she murmurs.

As soon as the column of water dies down, Moana steps over the geyser.

The broken rock beneath her feet is warm to the touch. She can feel the water rumbling beneath her, and she plants her feet a little wider to brace herself for the blast of water.

Something cinches around her waist.

Moana's stomach tightens with fear as she is lifted up and away from the geyser, moments before it erupts.

“You're not leaving already, are you?” Tamatoa asks in mock disappointment. “You can't go _now._ I was just about to prepare dinner~”

The reminder of what this monster did to Maui, and what it almost certainly intends to do to her, is enough to ignite Moana's spark of rebellion and set her thrashing in its grasp. “Let go of me!”

“And what if I don't?” Tamatoa snaps, dropping the mannerism of gracious host to squint at Moana. “You have some other has-been demigods waiting in the wings to save you?”

Moana considers lying, but decides this would be unconvincing. “No,” she admits, and she lifts her chin. “I have something _better_.”

“Oh?” Tamatoa prompts, eyes narrowing.

Moana points upward. “The ocean.”

“The ocean,” Tamatoa repeats doubtfully.

“What are you, anyway?” Moana asks. She crosses her arms in an attempt to appear in control of the situation. It is difficult when she is hanging so awkwardly from her waistline. “A... coconut crab?”

Tamatoa rolls his eyes. “Do you think I'm impressed by your taxonomic knowledge of crustaceans, human?”

Moana grins. “My _name_ is Moana. And maybe not... but you _should_ be worried about what I can do with that knowledge. Coconut crabs can't breathe underwater, can they?”

Tamatoa sighs and readjusts his hold on Moana so she is secured firmly in his claws. Well. No backing out, now, she supposes. “Yes, that's why I live in Lalotai, where the ocean _isn't_. Is this going somewhere, Mo-a-na?”

“If you don't let me go, I'll ask the ocean to come down here and drown you.”

Tamatoa snorts and shakes his other claw as if he's shaking in terror. “Oh, no, whatever shall I do? _Human_ ,” Tamatoa says, “do you expect me to believe the ocean answers to a _little girl_?”

“Do you want to bet on it?”

Tamatoa casts his gaze toward the ocean hovering overhead like a watery sky, and Moana calls out to it silently. _Please, just do something... anything..._

But the ocean is calm as ever.

Moana’s heart sinks.

Tamatoa turns his gaze back to her with a smug grin. He opens his mouth to speak -- or maybe even to eat her and do away with all pretense -- when seawater splashes down on Tamatoa's face from above, soaking him.

Moana laughs, thrilled and relieved as the spray hits her. Tamatoa gapes at her like a fish. “How did you--?!”

“The ocean is a friend of mine,” she says triumphantly -- only to be struck with a wave of grief when she remembers the last person she'd delivered that line to. Overcome, she strikes Tamatoa's claw with her fist. “And you _ate_ my _other_ friend, you terrible... gaudy... palm thief!”

“Maui, having friends? That's a laugh.” Moana strikes him again, and he hisses with displeasure, though she doubts she could possibly be hurting him. “Stop that. I don't know what you're getting so worked up about. It's not like I killed him.”

“What?” Moana stops her probably-futile (but definitely-satisfying) assault. “But, I saw you...”

“I _ate_ him,” Tamatoa clarifies, as if this is somehow different. “He's a demigod, did you know? They're made of sterner stuff than stomach acid.”

Moana touches her head as her mind works over this new information. Maui could still be alive...?

“Let’s take this inside,” Tamatoa suggests pointlessly -- he is the one carrying Moana, after all.

“Wait,” she says, “how do I know you're not going to eat me?”

“You don't,” Tamatoa says with a grin -- only to be answered with another splash of water. He sputters. “ _Fine,_ here.” And with that he deposits her back on her feet on the sand. “Come inside or go, it makes no difference to me.”

Moana looks up at Tamatoa curiously.

“But if I know Maui -- and I _do_ \-- he doesn't have _friends_ ,” Tamatoa insists. “He has people who use him for their own ends, and people _he_ uses for his. So if you're the former, you'll want to stick around if you still intend to get some use out of him.”

Then Tamatoa steps over Moana and reenters his cavern of hollow shells and gutted oysters.

Moana turns up toward the ocean and offers it her quiet thanks before following Tamatoa inside.

* * *

Moana sits on the sandy floor of Tamatoa's lair, absorbing everything he's told her. ”So Maui is... sitting in your stomach right now,” she says slowly.

“Yes... Taking longer than usual,” Tamatoa admits, then he laughs. “Probably he's embarrassed about his... _performance issues_.”

 _‘Longer than usual’,_ Moana mouths to herself, then shakes her head to dispel the thought. “So can I... talk to him?”

“He won't hear you from out here. I'm fairly well-insulated,” Tamatoa says, amused. “But I'm a little worried he's working himself into a fit in there. And I don't want to be nursing the indigestion it'll give me if he starts taking his frustration out on my internal organs...”

“Uh-huh...”

“Oh! I have an idea. _You_ can go persuade him to come out.”

Moana jerks upright and starts to stand. “What? No, uh, no thanks, I'm fine waiting out here--”

“Hold your breath,” Tamatoa says, and he picks her up and dangles her over his mouth. “Oh, and mind the teeth.”

Then he drops her, and Moana feels his throat constrict around her as he swallows her whole.

Moana doesn't have to hold her breath long -- because Tamatoa's throat soon opens up into the much less constricting confines of his stomach. It's dark, and in here the air is humid and hot. The momentum of her fall sends her crashing to her hands and knees on the slippery ground with its fleshy give.  “Eugh...” she groans.  A pulpy, putrefyingly warm liquid swirls around Moana's wrists and calves -- and the slimy texture of the stomach lining beneath her isn't something she's eager to commit to memory, either. She gathers her footing as best she can and wipes her hands on her skirt.  The smell of bile is faint enough that it wouldn't make her sick on its own, but the circumstances combined nearly do the job. Her first breath makes her gag, but she masters her reaction and manages to continue breathing with only minor difficulties.

As her eyes adjust, she realizes the inside of Tamatoa's stomach is lit with a familiar bioluminescent glow -- and just in time to narrowly avoid being crushed by what looks like a ring of teeth that circumnavigates the stomach from floor to wall to ceiling. She shouts in alarm and retreats a few steps, very nearly falling again as she throws her arms out to regain her balance.

Then she hears a sudden splash.

“Moana?!”

Moana's shoulders sag with relief. “Maui! You're alive!” She can't see him in the darkness, but just hearing his voice again is more than she thought she would ever do. She looks around, but can't quite make out his shape in the darkness. “Where are you?”

A large, familiar hand touches her arm, and she grabs it with her own hand. He's really here. Tamatoa wasn't lying.

“Are you all right?” she asks, even as Maui guides her away from the faintly glowing maw of teeth with a cautious, “Get away from those, they're brutal.”

“Me? Of course I'm all right,” he scoffs, and Moana is even grateful to hear the usual arrogance in his tone. “I'm _Maui_... But what about you? Did that bottomfeeder get any of your limbs before he swallowed you?” He starts patting her down, making sure all her limbs are intact -- it's kind of nice that he's concerned, Moana thinks.

“No, I'm fine,” she says, waving his hands away, “but--”

“Tamatoa!” Maui roars heavenward, and Moana jumps in alarm. “You think this is a joke? Ha, well I'll give you something to laugh about!”

Moana's eyes are finally started to adjust, and she sees Maui rear back his arm and strike the walls of the stomach with his enormous fist. Tamatoa shakes around them, and Moana's own stomach flips with anxiety.

“Not so funny any more, is it? You egotistical,” punch, “backstabbing,” punch, “little--!”

“Maui, wait!” Moana jumps up and manages to grab his fist before he lands another blow. The comical result is Moana hanging from Maui’s suspended fist, due to his formidable height -- but thankfully he does stop his assault.

Though Moana could do without him looking at her like she's lost her mind.

With a sheepish grin, Moana allows herself to slide off his fist. She splashes back into the putrid slurry of stomach acid and half-digested fish, and her expression immediately transforms into a grimace of disgust. “Um,” Moana hedges.  It is a trial to ignore the onslaught of unpleasant sensations long enough to articulate herself. “Tamatoa actually... asked me to come get you.”

Maui turns toward her and meets her gaze with a baffled one in the bioluminescent dimness. “What?”

“Well,” she says, feeling entirely unequipped to explain to a _demigod_ the motivations of a _giant magical crab monster_ , “when he ate you, I thought you died, so I... was going to leave without you.”

Moana sees the outline of Maui's broad brow jump, and she wonders if it genuinely hadn't occurred to him that she might come to that conclusion.

“But he said you were actually fine, and... you are! So that's... _good_ ,” Moana says. _Now can we please get out of here?_ she thinks desperately.

But apparently, hearing that Moana (technically, not-really) _chose_ to be eaten by a giant crab out of concern for Maui's safety does the _opposite_ of inspiring Maui to get them out of the situation. Instead, he turns away from her and starts pacing restlessly. Moana takes a few steps back to give his splash radius a wide berth.

“... Maui?”

“I can't _believe_ he brought that up,” Maui mutters to himself as he paces. Moana doesn't think for a moment Maui's words are meant for her, but considering the circumstances she decides to listen in anyway. “I told him that in _confidence_ \-- I mean, I didn't swear him to secrecy over it, but you'd think a demigod could reasonably expect information shared over a couple cups of kava to be _private_... I don't think that's unreasonable!”

Maui spins on his heel.

“Am I being unreasonable?”

Moana startles at being so suddenly addressed. “Um.”

“I don’t go around putting _his_ issues on blast for everyone to hear,” Maui continues, so caught up in his outrage that he doesn’t wait for a response as he begins moving again. “ ‘Drab little crab’ isn’t the half of it... But I’m not going to say anything _else,_ because I’m not _petty!”_ This last he shouts up toward the roof of Tamatoa’s stomach. Moana swears it echoes throughout the chamber.

Something drips onto her shoulder.

She decides to intervene.

“ _Maui,_ ” she says again. He turns sharply toward her, chest heaving with emotion. Moana approaches him, and when she is beside him she lays a hand on his arm. “I don’t really know what you’re talking about... but if Tamatoa was concerned enough to ask me to come get you--” _... because of the very real possibility you’d punch a hole in his stomach,_ she doesn’t add-- “then he doesn’t seem... completely bad?”

Maui exhales sharply through his nose and turns his head away. A refusal of acknowledgment.

“Either way,” Moana continues, “can we deal with it... _not here?_ ” She holds her arm out to indicate their current location, as if Maui needed reminding (and judging by his lack of concern, Moana thinks it’s a reminder he sorely needs). Almost in punctuation to her request, a gurgling sound rises up from somewhere farther down Tamatoa’s digestive tract. Moana shudders, and judging by his grimace, Maui seems to share the sentiment.

“Yeah,” he agrees, “okay.”

* * *

The pair run afoul of Tamatoa’s gag reflex a couple times, but they eventually manage to crawl out the way they had come. It is a surreal and unpleasant experience -- one that Moana hopes never to repeat as long as she lives.

Tamatoa’s mouth is wide open when they emerge, providing them ample room to walk across his tongue and step over his barnacle-encrusted teeth.

Stepping back out onto the sand -- sweet, blessed dry land -- provides a little reprieve... but Moana is still coated in saliva, and untold quantities of other crablike excretions that she doesn’t care to identify. Glancing over at Maui, she sees that he is in a similar state, although he doesn’t seem particularly concerned about it. Moana can barely wait to get back to the ocean and rinse herself off.

“I hope you enjoyed your stay~” Tamatoa says, and Moana turns around in time to see him rise to his full height.  His shadow looms over them, and a brief twinge of fear courses through her -- but it’s diminished by the indignity and exasperation she feels at what just transpired.

Maui clears his throat, and Moana takes stock of his expression. He looks... resigned? Cautious? She might even say he looked apologetic -- if she didn’t know he was the sort of person to steal your boat with a “you’re welcome” as soon as you’d become acquainted. “Tamatoa,” he says guardedly. It almost sounds like a greeting.

“Maui,” Tamatoa responds in a drawl.

Moana watches the stand-off with a keen eye.

“Listen, I uh...” he begins, which fails to fill Moana with confidence that he knows what he’s doing. “I’m kind of on a... mystical quest of cosmic, world-saving proportions right now. You know how it is.” Unsurprisingly, Tamatoa is unmoved by the statement.  Maui gestures vaguely as if searching for words. “It’s... time sensitive.”

“So is molting,” Tamatoa deadpans. “I haven’t molted in a _thousand_ years, and I’m doing just _fine._ ”

Maui’s eyes flick to the half-severed leg on Tamatoa’s right side. “I can see that,” he says slowly. “I’ll... come swing by when I’m done saving the world?”

Tamatoa sighs gustily. “What do I care about the _world?”_

Maui runs a hand through his hair, and with the other he begins counting on his fingers: “Treasure. Fish. Kava...”

Moana can scarcely believe her eyes as she watches Tamatoa cross his claws over each other like a stubborn human child. “Hmph.”

“... And you’re one of the idiots who lives in it, crab cake.”

Tamatoa rolls his eyes and sighs again as if this information is a dreadful inconvenience to him.  He reaches behind him to something Moana can’t see--

And holds Maui’s hook out to him in the pincers of one claw, as easy as anything.

Moana  _stares._

“Fine,” Tamatoa says, his voice carrying a reluctance that his actions simply don’t corroborate, “but if you don’t bring me back something shiny, I’ll eat you again.”

Moana finds the threat has a lot less weight than it initially did, when she believed such a thing would kill the demigod.  Now it’s just... strange.

“Can do,” Maui says, and he reaches out to touch the hook -- but he doesn’t take it.  Moana wonders if he suspects it’s a trick. Maui seems to be contemplating whether or not he wants to push his luck. “And your leg...?”

Tamatoa’s enormous body shakes with laughter, but the claw holding onto the hook is remarkably still. “Maui, my man, I’m a _decapod_. I’ve got limbs to spare.” He demonstrates his ample supply of limbs by lifting and dropping each of his legs in sequence. “And I could regrow it, if I wanted to. Obviously I won’t -- and eat this gorgeous, shiny shell? Not likely -- but it’s the principle of the thing, you understand. Bygones!” Tamatoa grins with all of his barnacle-encrusted teeth. “Water under the bridge, if you like.”

There is a long beat of silence, after which Maui gently shifts his hold on the hook to take it from Tamatoa’s grasp. “... Thanks,” he says.

Tamatoa retreats once he’s handed off the relic, waving a claw in dismissal. “What are friends for?” Moana crosses her arms and raises her eyebrows at the crab as he turns away from them, remembering Tamatoa’s choice words about Maui’s “friends” not too long ago. “Don’t be a stranger now, Maui~”

Moana wants to ask, _is that it?_ \-- but more than that she wants to rinse the half-dried digestive fluids from her body. She wants to leave Lalotai behind her and never, _ever_ return. And most of all she wants to forget this entire experience ever happened. 

Maui and Moana exit Tamatoa’s lair in uncomfortable silence, and they come out onto the same outcropping of sand where Moana had nearly made her escape.  Following Maui’s path with her eyes, she can’t help but feel a swell of pride when she sees he’s heading toward the geysers -- meaning she had correctly identified a viable method of leaving Lalotai.

Something about Maui’s silence is troubling her, though.  Come to think of it, she doesn’t think he’s met her eyes once since they emerged from Tamatoa’s stomach.

“So,” she says in defiance of her desire to make their departure as painless and forgettable as possible, “Tamatoa made it sound like... you end up in his stomach a lot...?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Moana considers their arrival to Lalotai -- how Maui had insisted on going without her -- and how her own reaction to what she perceived as his demise had caused her undue stress, when he had been fine all along. “Is this why you wanted to come alone...?”

_“Stop talking.”_

**Author's Note:**

> ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ


End file.
